Editor,

Some facts need to be stated in response to the letter to the editor, “Bristles at wearing a mask.”

Under the 10th and 14th constitutional amendments, Gov. Inslee has the right to issue executive orders when in a public health pandemic. Businesses must comply or face steep fines or revocation of their business license.

In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a precedent-setting case, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, a fierce defender of First Amendment Rights, stated, “… the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject (to) for the common good … real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others”

That means your individual rights do not take precedence over the collective rights of the community at large.

During the 1918 flu pandemic, which held on for two-plus years, the one action that helped to stop it was wearing a mask. If you don’t like wearing a mask then maybe you should move to Arizona, which was cited last week on major networks as having the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the world.

Get educated. NPR,PBS and BBC are 100 percent factual/truthful reporting. FoxNews is at 20 percent with 8 percent ranging from some false information down to “pants on fire” craziness, per the Pulitzer Prize winning Poynter Journalism Institute of Media.

Charlene Davenport

Clinton